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Three Semantics for Distributed Systems and Their Relations with Alignment Composition*
Antoine Zimmermann and Jérôme Euzenat
INRIA Rhône-Alpes, Montbonnot Saint-Martin, FranceAntoine.Zimmermann@inrialpes.fr
Jerome.Euzenat@inrialpes.fr
Abstract. An ontology alignment explicitly describes the relations holding between two ontologies. A system composed of ontologies and alignments interconnecting them is herein called a distributed system. We give three different semantics of a distributed system, that do not interfere with the semantics of ontologies. Their advantages are compared with respect to allowing consistent merge of ontologies, managing heterogeneity and complying with an alignment composition operation. We show that only the first two variants, which differ from other proposed semantics, can offer a sound composition operation.
*This work is partly supported by the Knowledge Web NoE (IST-2004-507482).
LNCS 4273, p. 16 ff.
lncs@springer.com
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006